Bell X1's Atlas single ahead of Good Bones album 2026
With the ninth album due next month and Irish dates already under way, the Celbridge band lean into the open-sky Americana of their Hudson Valley sessions and add a third night at Vicar Street.
Bell X1 released the new single Atlas on 14 October, the latest preview of their ninth studio album Good Bones, due on 13 November. The track follows the recent singles But First, Love and Coughing Up Butterflies and arrives as the band prepare to take the new material onto Irish stages in the coming weeks.
Of Atlas the band said they were "leaning into the freewheeling Americana of the Hudson Valley where we recorded, the endless skies and wraparound porches of the place." That sense of open space and unhurried motion is the frame they have given the song, and it points to where the record was made.
Hudson Valley sessions
Good Bones was recorded at Dreamland Recording Studios in Upstate New York with producer Josh Kaufman and engineer D. James Goodwin. The choice of room and landscape sits behind the sound the band name without hesitation: freewheeling, porch-lit, wide-skied. Kaufman and Goodwin's work with the group gives the album a live, unforced sound rather than a heavily layered studio construction, and Atlas is the clearest public signal yet of how that approach lands.
Frontman Paul Noonan spoke of the sessions in plain terms. "The record was made shortly after losing our friend and collaborator, Glenn Keating, and was a very heightened, emotional, but beautiful time." Glenn Keating, the Dublin musician and multi-instrumentalist, died on 4 March 2026 at the age of 43. Noonan's words put that loss inside the making of Good Bones rather than at a distance from it. The band present the album as the product of a period that was both raw and fruitful — heightened, in their own language, and still beautiful. Atlas, with its turn toward the Americana of those Hudson Valley days, is the first full public taste of how that balance sits on record.
For a Celbridge band whose craft has long been built on songs that hold feeling without overstatement, the framing matters. The single does not present as a slogan or a reset; it arrives as a report from the rooms where the ninth album took shape, and from the weeks that followed a close collaborator's death. Listeners who already know the earlier previews will hear Atlas as a further step along the same path, not a break from it.
Irish dates through the winter
The single's arrival coincided with the announcement of an extra Dublin show. Bell X1 will now play Vicar Street on 29 November in addition to the nights already set for 27 and 28 November. The three Dublin dates form part of an autumn and winter Irish tour that opens at Wexford's Spiegeltent on 17 October. Further gigs follow in Cork, Derry, Belfast and Kerry. Tickets for the newly added Vicar Street date are on sale now.
The run stitches together stages across the island at the same moment the studio work reaches the shops. Good Bones lands on 13 November, squarely between the Wexford opener and the Vicar Street stand. Pre-orders are already available through the band's channels, giving listeners a route into the full record while Atlas does the early work of setting the tone.
What the band have put on the table is straightforward: a single that names its landscape, an album shaped in the period after a friend's death, and a run of Irish gigs that grows by one more night in Dublin. The freewheeling quality they claim for Atlas will be tested in rooms from the Spiegeltent to Vicar Street. The ninth album follows within weeks. Between the Hudson Valley porches and the winter stages at home, Bell X1 have timed the release and the tour to meet head on.
Tour dates
OCTOBER 2026
17 – Wexford, Wexford Spiegeltent Festival
NOVEMBER 2026
27 – Dublin, Vicar Street
28 – Dublin, Vicar Street
29 – Dublin, Vicar Street
DECEMBER 2026
12 – Belfast, Mandela Hall
19 – Co. Kerry, Gleneagle Arena
Of Atlas the band said they were "leaning into the freewheeling Americana of the Hudson Valley where we recorded, the endless skies and wraparound porches of the place." That sense of open space and unhurried motion is the frame they have given the song, and it points to where the record was made.
Hudson Valley sessions
Good Bones was recorded at Dreamland Recording Studios in Upstate New York with producer Josh Kaufman and engineer D. James Goodwin. The choice of room and landscape sits behind the sound the band name without hesitation: freewheeling, porch-lit, wide-skied. Kaufman and Goodwin's work with the group gives the album a live, unforced sound rather than a heavily layered studio construction, and Atlas is the clearest public signal yet of how that approach lands.
Frontman Paul Noonan spoke of the sessions in plain terms. "The record was made shortly after losing our friend and collaborator, Glenn Keating, and was a very heightened, emotional, but beautiful time." Glenn Keating, the Dublin musician and multi-instrumentalist, died on 4 March 2026 at the age of 43. Noonan's words put that loss inside the making of Good Bones rather than at a distance from it. The band present the album as the product of a period that was both raw and fruitful — heightened, in their own language, and still beautiful. Atlas, with its turn toward the Americana of those Hudson Valley days, is the first full public taste of how that balance sits on record.
For a Celbridge band whose craft has long been built on songs that hold feeling without overstatement, the framing matters. The single does not present as a slogan or a reset; it arrives as a report from the rooms where the ninth album took shape, and from the weeks that followed a close collaborator's death. Listeners who already know the earlier previews will hear Atlas as a further step along the same path, not a break from it.
Irish dates through the winter
The single's arrival coincided with the announcement of an extra Dublin show. Bell X1 will now play Vicar Street on 29 November in addition to the nights already set for 27 and 28 November. The three Dublin dates form part of an autumn and winter Irish tour that opens at Wexford's Spiegeltent on 17 October. Further gigs follow in Cork, Derry, Belfast and Kerry. Tickets for the newly added Vicar Street date are on sale now.
The run stitches together stages across the island at the same moment the studio work reaches the shops. Good Bones lands on 13 November, squarely between the Wexford opener and the Vicar Street stand. Pre-orders are already available through the band's channels, giving listeners a route into the full record while Atlas does the early work of setting the tone.
What the band have put on the table is straightforward: a single that names its landscape, an album shaped in the period after a friend's death, and a run of Irish gigs that grows by one more night in Dublin. The freewheeling quality they claim for Atlas will be tested in rooms from the Spiegeltent to Vicar Street. The ninth album follows within weeks. Between the Hudson Valley porches and the winter stages at home, Bell X1 have timed the release and the tour to meet head on.
Tour dates
OCTOBER 2026
17 – Wexford, Wexford Spiegeltent Festival
NOVEMBER 2026
27 – Dublin, Vicar Street
28 – Dublin, Vicar Street
29 – Dublin, Vicar Street
DECEMBER 2026
12 – Belfast, Mandela Hall
19 – Co. Kerry, Gleneagle Arena
